As a parent you get to see lots of
firsts, such as your child’s first steps and first words.
Unfortunately, you also get to see other, less pleasant firsts, like
when your darling baby boy falls and scrapes himself. And just
recently - a lot sooner than I though it would happen – Junior got
his little toddler heart broken for the first time.
My wife and I watched it all happen and
couldn’t do a thing about it. We wanted to visit some of our
favorite restaurants (we were moving to a really small town with not
a lot of dining options) so we stopped in at the 66 Diner
shortly before we moved. Our waitress brought us some menus and we
placed our order, and somewhere in there we realized that Junior had
it bad for the waitress.
Junior is at an age where he hasn’t
realized that it’s impolite to stare, and the whole time he just
stared goggle-eyed while she took our order. He continued to stare
longingly as she walked off. He was transfixed and waited patiently
for her to return from the kitchen, and when she did, he continued to
stare as she waited on her other tables. We knew it was serious when
he wouldn’t stop staring long enough to eat, because Junior loves
to eat. We even offered him french fries (which he loves) but he
couldn’t be bothered. (For the record, we don’t feed him french fries very often. Just sometimes when we eat out, and even
then it’s only a few. You’re not such a great parent either.)
When her other tables left, our
waitress came over and chatted with Junior, and after an initial
moment of shyness Junior was dropping some pretty smooth lines.
Waitress: Hey, what’s your
name?
Junior: Oh yeh beeeeeeeeee!
Bop bop yeeeeeeee!
Waitress: Cool. What’re you
doing tonight?
Junior: Woah woah no no bee
beeeeeeeeeeeeeee! (Blows raspberry)
Eventually we had to pay and go home,
and Junior was devastated. He cried all the way out to the car and
the whole way home. I suspect that somewhere in there they had a
little talk where she told him that she needed a man who was a little
more stable, didn’t live with his parents and didn’t poop in his
pants.
“Get used to it,” I told Junior as
he cried broken-heartedly. “Women will do that to you.”
Fortunately, earlier in the daytime my
cousin had given us a large yellow summer squash and Junior hugged it
like a stuffed animal. He held on to it and cried himself to sleep.
(For the record, he has other toys, I promise. He just really
liked the squash. Shut up.)
He was feeling better the next day
because everyone knows that the remedy for a broken heart is a yellow
summer squash.
If you don't have kids, have you ever tried to spit game at a waiter/waitress and it didn't go so well?
If you have kids, has your baby ever gotten really attached to anything weird?
Please leave a comment.